微博市值超过Twitter

China’s Weibo is worth more than US rival Twitter, after a rallying share price drove its market capitalisation to $11.3bn, surpassing the US messaging platform’s $11.1bn.

中国的微博(Weibo)市值已超过美国竞争对手Twitter，此前微博的股价大涨推动其市值升至113亿美元，超过了Twitter的111亿美元。

Twitter’s share price dropped late last week after the company missed revenue forecasts and failed to deliver on hopes of a “Trump bump”. By contrast, shares in Weibo, part-owned by Alibaba, have been climbing on the back of a rising number of subscribers and its growing ability to wring more cash out of them.

上周晚些时候，由于未达到营收预测且未能兑现关于“特朗普提振”的期待，Twitter股价大跌。相比之下，由阿里巴巴(Alibaba)部分持股的微博的股价在用户数量不断增加和盈利能力越来越强的推动下不断攀升。

Weibo came close to eclipsing Twitter when the latter’s shares tumbled in October when it transpired that rumoured suitors, including Walt Disney and Salesforce, had failed to materialise. This is the first time Weibo’s market capitalisation has risen past Twitter’s on a close-of-day basis, according to Bloomberg data.

去年10月，微博的市值曾一度逼近Twitter的市值，当时，包括华特迪士尼(Walt Disney)和Salesforce的潜在收购方未能正式发起收购，导致Twitter股价大跌。根据彭博社(Bloomberg)的数据，这是微博首次在股市收盘时市值超过Twitter。

While Weibo’s usurping of Twitter’s position owes much to the US company’s falling stock, the switchover comes as China’s technology groups are narrowing the gap with their western rivals on various metrics — and in many more cases are overtaking them in terms of offerings to consumers.

虽然微博市值超过Twitter与后者股价大跌有很大的关系，但这种转变说明中国科技集团正在很多指标上缩小与西方竞争对手之间的差距，而且在为消费者提供产品和服务方面，在很多时候超过了西方同行。

Alibaba, for example, is dwarfed by ecommerce peer Amazon when it comes to market capitalisation: $255bn v $395bn. But its net income of $2.47bn in the three months to the end of December put Amazon’s $749m in the shade and its business model, which via Ant Financial also encompasses payments, is much broader.

例如，阿里巴巴虽然在市值上不如电商同行亚马逊(Amazon)，两者的市值分别为2550亿美元和3950亿美元，但是它去年第四季度24.7亿美元的净利润却远超后者的7.49亿美元，而且阿里巴巴的商业模式——通过蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)还提供支付服务——要宽泛得多。

One area where some Chinese companies have lagged behind substantially is in monetising their subscriber bases, seen by many investors as leaving huge potential for growth. Subscribers to Moments, the Facebook-like news feed run by Tencent, for example, may see just one ad — a fraction of those shown on the US social network.

在把用户基础转化为利润方面，中国科技公司仍严重落后，但这也让许多投资者看到了巨大的增长潜力。例如，腾讯(Tencent)运营的类似Facebook资讯服务的朋友圈(Moments)的订户可能只看到一个广告——这是美国社交网络上显示的广告数量的一个零头。

Nasdaq-listed Weibo, which has more than 340m monthly average users, is similarly behind.

在纳斯达克(Nasdaq)上市、月平均用户超过3.4亿人的微博，也在这方面落后。

Jialong Shi, internet analyst at Nomura, calculates that Weibo’s annual average revenue per monthly user of $1.90 in 2015 was a quarter of Twitter’s $6.50 and one-sixth of Facebook’s $11.30. These numbers continued to improve in the first three quarters of 2016, but are still well behind those of its US peers.

野村证券(Nomura)互联网分析师施加龙（音）计算的结果是：2015年，微博每个月度用户带来的年均营收为1.90美元，只有Twitter（6.50美元）的四分之一和Facebook（11.30美元）的六分之一。虽然2016年前三季度的数据有所改善，但微博在这项指标上仍远远落后于美国竞争对手。

“The social platform ad market is very nascent in China,” said one Hong Kong analyst, who noted that it accounts for 8 per cent of the online ad market against 20 per cent in the US and is dominated by Tencent Moments and Weibo.

香港的一名分析师称：“中国的社交平台广告市场还处于非常早期的阶段。”他指出，中国社交平台广告在中国在线广告市场的占比仅为8%（而且由腾讯朋友圈和微博主导），而美国的这一比例为20%。

While Weibo has been dubbed China’s Twitter it is in some ways more akin to YouTube with a dash of Instagram thrown in. Videos and live streaming, much of it user-generated, are popular on Weibo, a reflection of the heavily youth-based audience, with 88 per cent under 33.

虽然微博一直被喻为中国的Twitter，但从某种角度来说，它更像YouTube和Instagram的结合体。视频和直播内容（很多是用户生成的）在微博上非常流行，这与微博用户大多为年轻人有很大关系。微博88%的用户都是年龄在33岁以下的年轻人。

Twitter is blocked in Chinese mainland, although still claims millions of users who access the site through virtual private networks.

虽然Twitter在中国内地遭到屏蔽，但Twitter仍声称有数百万用户通过虚拟专网访问该网站。